


Opus Sixty-Six

by Findswoman



Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Censorship, Gen, Music, Protests, Speciesism, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2019-01-27 07:57:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12577216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Findswoman/pseuds/Findswoman
Summary: Two non-Human musicians are forced to perform before the Emperor—and offer protest. Rated PG-13 for violence, censorship, speciesism, gaybashing, and a single brief mention of a character’s past sexual assault. A ficgift to Chyntuck in honor of her TF.N Fanfic Awards wins in 2015.





	Opus Sixty-Six

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chyntuck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chyntuck/gifts).



“Get up, furry. You’re on.”  
  
Miarla Ligouri rose from her bench in the detention cell and followed the black-uniformed guards down the corridor. Although slightly short for a Selonian worker female, she still stood a whole head taller than both of the Imperial soldiers leading her. The binders on her wrists did not diminish from the regal figure she cut in her floor-length scarlet gown.  
  
“A recital in His Imperial Majesty’s private auditorium. This’ll be the highlight of your career, _otta_.” The fur at the nape of Miarla’s neck bristled at this slur, but she said nothing. “Now let’s go get your flamboyant freak of an accompanist.”  
  
Shortly they arrived at another cell. Sitting there was a lanky, blue-skinned male Twi’lek, clad in snug-fitting black leather trousers and a tunic of goldenrod synthsilk. His hands too were cuffed. He sprang to his feet as he saw Miarla and the guards approach.  
  
“Miarla! Are you OK? Is it really—”  
  
“Quiet, flameboy!” barked the soldier. “You’re coming too!”  
  
“Officer Bormun, if you please.” It was Miarla who spoke, her voice purring and lyrical.  
  
“What do you want, furball?”  
  
“Well, since we are about to have the . . . honor of performing for His Imperial Majesty and all, may Jefson and I take a moment to discuss some . . . musical considerations?”  
  
“Fine. But be quick about it.”  
  
“Yeah,” grunted his colleague. “His Majesty doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”  
  
Miarla and Jefson sat together on the bench in the cell. “So it’s time, isn’t it?” the Twi’lek asked in a whisper.  
  
“Looks like it.”  
  
“You sure you want to go through with this?”  
  
“Jefs, we _have_ to.”  
  
“Of all the pieces, though . . . you _know_ both Bel Fiora and Eskari are banned . . .”  
  
“That’s _why_ we have to,” sighed Miarla. “We can’t let that wrinkled old brute tell us or anyone else what we can and can’t perform. We’ve always believed that, right?”  
  
“Well, yes, but—”  
  
“And anyway,” she continued, cocking her head, “there’s no way in any of the nine Hells that I’m singing ‘Glory of the Empire’ for him or _anyone_.”  
  
“Hurry up, you two!” yapped Bormun.  
  
“Just another sec, OK?” Jefson retorted, then twiddled his fingers nervously as he lowered his voice again. “So, um—I know we talked about doing either number three or number four—”  
  
“Maybe number four? That was always my favorite.”  
  
“How did I guess? You and that sustained triple- _p_ high _cresh_.”  
  
The lutrinoid singer gave a little chirping laugh. For a moment it seemed as though she and Jefson were back in the practice halls of the Coronet City Conservatory of Music. They had known each other ever since Master Niskus Navlys’s first-year Intro to Galactic Music course in their first year. Together they had survived countless rehearsals, master classes, juries, and recitals. After graduation their friendship and collaboration had continued, and both went on to become up-and-coming young performers on the Coreworld art music scene. The stages of some of the finest concert halls in the Galaxy—in Imperial City, Theed, Chibias, and Empress Teta, among many others—had been graced by Miarla Ligouri, soprano, and Jefson Er’kap, clavi-pian.  
  
And then came COMPNOR, and with it the censorship, the speciesism, the scarlet holopanels that strove to screen non-Human artistry from public view. Non-Human artists and performers of all kinds were banned from the Galaxy’s major concert halls, theaters, opera houses, and galleries. Some gave up their careers altogether. But not Miarla and Jefson. The two old schoolmates found ways to continue making music, seeking out smaller, less regulated venues: small recital halls, streetside galleries, tapcafes, private homes. With renewed determination they sang and played the works of banned composers both Human and non-Human.  
  
After that, the arrest and detention was inevitable. This very engagement—if it could be called that—was inevitable. They had always known that. But would it be worth it? That they didn’t yet know.  
  
“All right, you two!” Bormun’s voice broke the silence. “You’ve wasted enough time. Get a move on!”  
  
They were escorted through the corridors of the Imperial Palace to an unlabeled door at the end of a short, dim hallway—the stage door of the Emperor’s private auditorium. As Bormun opened the door, Miarla caught a glimpse of the heavy curtain of silver-blue velvoid, the dim red sconces, and the angular, black-and-gray geometric patterns on the wall—typical banal Neo-Sith Deco ornamentation. The stage was empty except for a standard concert-size clavi-pian.  
  
“A Nidwalb,” remarked Jefson in an undertone. “Probably dreadfully out of tune.”  
  
“Quiet, tailhead,” snapped Bormun. “Sprugg, take their binders off.”  
  
As Sprugg did so, Bormun strode out to the middle of the stage and puffed out his chest. “Your Imperial Majesty, ladies, and gentlemen!” he bellowed. “It is my great pleasure tonight to introduce the _reek-nowned_ Selonian soprano Miarla Ligouri, who will now perform our beloved Imperial anthem, ‘Glory of the Empire’!”  
  
Applause broke out. At a prod from Sprugg, Miarla and Jefson ascended the stage. Miarla noticed out of the corner of her eye that the tips of her collaborator’s lekku were twitching in irritation. _Just trust those boorish gray-coats to ignore the accompanist!_  
  
As she took her bow, Miarla looked out over the audience—over the advisors in their pompous caftans and oversized hats, the gray-uniformed officers of all shapes and sizes, the courtesans in their slinky gowns. She saw the raised, semi-enclosed dais in the middle of the room where His Imperial Majesty sat, cloaked in black. A leering grin flashed across his wrinkled features as she caught his eye. For a moment it occurred to Miarla that she was probably taller and stronger than he or anyone else in the room, and that she—unlike any of them—possessed razor-sharp claws and teeth . . . what if, just _what if_ she were to jump from the stage and use them to claw those hideous orbs—those horrid, bloodshot, yellow excuses for eyes—from their sunken sockets . . . ?  
  
The applause subsided. Jefson was sitting ready at the clavi-pian. Miarla turned and gave him a nod.  
  
An ethereal _cresh_ -minor chord shimmered forth from the clavi-pian’s high register.  
  
“ _Here, in the luminous, windswept dusk . . ._ ”  
  
Murmurs and whispers hissed across the auditorium. “Wait a minute . . . What’s going on . . . That’s not . . .”  
  
“ _Now!_ ” A crashing unison gave way to turbid, rumbling tremolo in the low register. “ _Before the strings of the vye are slashed . . ._ ”  
  
“What’s this?! How _dare_ they!” The Emperor’s voice crackled above the ripple of murmurs. He turned to a corpulent advisor sitting nearby. “Vandron, what _is_ this degenerate hogswill?!”  
  
“I . . . I don’t know, Sire . . . it sounds like maybe Ugon Sal-Stiller, or Lorne Bel Fiora, or someone else in the Second Corellian School—”  
  
“ _Before the moons bleed to death . . ._ ” Louder and louder grew the tremolo chords as they climbed higher and higher. “ _Before the hyperdrive of the day fails . . ._ ”  
  
Another advisor, an equus-faced man in a wide-brimmed black hat, chimed in. “It _is_ Bel Fiora, Sire. From his opus-sixty-six _Eskari Songs._ ”  
  
“ _Eskari?!_ That deranged, alien-loving—”  
  
The agitation of the tremolo gave way to a plangent, lyrical melody. “ _Give me your hand—O jebwa-petal-small!_ ”  
  
“Yes, Sire. Namajib Eskari and Lorne Bel Fiora were good friends, and Bel Fiora set several of Eskari’s poems to music—mostly as large orchestral and choral works, but he wrote the opus-sixty-six songs as a personal gesture shortly after Eskari’s death. They’re based on poems from _The Vortex,_ Eskari’s very first—”  
  
“NO!!” The Emperor sprang to his feet. “GUARDS! SILENCE THEM! NOW!”  
  
“ _Give me your hand, and whisper, and remember . . ._ ”  
  
Like a green meteor, a bolt of blaster fire sailed across the stage from the direction of the stage door. Still singing, Miarla jumped out of its way as it hit the clavi-pian, leaving a gaping, smoking hole in the black-brown wood. Raucous cheering exploded from the audience.  
  
“ _. . . that you are all that is left of my song . . ._ ”  
  
Another blaster bolt flew from the same direction. An earsplitting scream combined with a cacophonous clang as Jefson collapsed face-first onto the keyboard of the clavi-pian. A voice grumbled, “Oh, _kriff!_ I’m _out!_ ” More cheering erupted.  
  
Miarla shuddered visibly but kept singing. With the sublime high _cresh_ just ahead, she barely noticed that the Emperor was now standing, his hands extended toward her and the lurid yellow of his eyes trained on her . . .  
  
“ _. . . in this . . . luminous . . . windswept . . ._ ”  
  
Miarla shrieked and doubled over in sudden, excruciating pain. A barrage of images were bombarding her mind like a hailstorm of razor blades. Late-night cramming in the practice room . . . nerve-wracking juries . . . embarrassing concert-night flubs . . . devastating masterclass criticism . . . the eminent visiting professor who forced his way into her practice room one evening . . . the humiliating arrest at the Works benefit concert . . .  
  
With a final bloodcurdling scream, she collapsed to the stage floor, unconscious.  
  
And thunderous applause filled the auditorium. ¶

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, the title is meant to be reminiscent of A Certain Order Executed in Episode III.
> 
> The otta is an established GFFA creature (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Otta). Its use as a slur for a lutrinoid being is not officially established; I use it here in keeping with the common strategy of using the name of a “lower,” nonsentient being as a slur for a similar sentient being (compare, for example, how Bossk calls Zuckuss “bug” in The Yavin Vassilika, or the use of “rabbit” as a slur for hares in Brian Jacques’s Redwall books).
> 
> Nine [Corellian] Hells: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Corellian_religion
> 
> COMPNOR: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/COMPNOR
> 
> Chibias concert hall: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Chibias_concert_hall
> 
> Theed concert hall: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Concert_Hall
> 
> Vye: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bass_vye
> 
> Jebwa: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jebwa_flower (I chose it because it’s native to Eskari’s homeworld of Corellia—no idea whether its petals are actually small or not, because the Wook doesn’t say, but it sounded pretty!)
> 
> Vandron: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Crueya_Vandron. His daughter, Marika, is a Chyntuck OC introduced in “A Tree-Dweller in Imperial City.”
> 
> The “equus-faced man in a wide-brimmed black hat” is meant to be Kren Blista-Vanee, whose Wook entry describes him as being “a socialite and connoisseur of fine art”: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kren_Blista-Vanee
> 
> Coronet City Conservatory, Ugon Sal-Stiller, Lorne Bel Fiora, and the Second Corellian School are all my own creations. The clavi-pian is as well, and is the result of my further ruminations on this post in the Writer’s Desk thread.
> 
> The Works: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Works. It is also the site of the Plebeian Exhibition at which Ayesha Eskari exhibits in part 2, chapter 10 of Chyntuck's epic Anánke (http://boards.theforce.net/posts/52278980).
> 
> The concept of the forced concert at which the performer protests by playing a different piece than expected was inspired by the climactic concert scene in act 2, scene 5 of the opera The Passenger by Miecysław Weinberg (1968; premiered 2006).
> 
> Nidwalb: my own creation, named after Baldwin Pianos.
> 
> Niskus Navlys is named for Sylvan Suskin (d. 2008), a longtime professor of music history at my own alma mater, Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Although I never actually took it (I placed out), his Music History 101 class was something by way of an institution and a rite of passage for first-year conservatory students.
> 
> The Emperor’s use of the word “degenerate” is indeed meant to echo the Nazi regime’s use of that term to mean pretty much any kind of modern art by people they didn’t like.
> 
> “Triple-p,” “unison,” and “tremolo” are all real-life musical terms.


End file.
